I've just arrived at the end of a relatively eventful week! No doubt if you've been following me on Facebook or Twitter, you'll already know what events I'm talking about.

Wednesday morning, running ten minutes late for work (late by my own standards more than actually being late), I was sprinting down St. Albans road between my house and Watford Junction where I park my bike on the way to work. Normally the traffic moves so slowly that it's safe enough without a helmet and it's barely 1.5 miles from door to door. This Wednesday morning however, as I later found out, a bus driver decided to headlight flash a Ford Ka coming the other way who was waiting to turn right. The Ford Ka didn't see me coming up the inside of the bus and took the corner - and the split second following, I have a very distinct memory of embracing the bonnet of the car with a lot of force at about 20 MPH. (If you want to see the actual junction on Streetview, check it out here.)

I don't remember much of what happened shortly afterwards so I'm just going to list what I've pieced together in some sort of approximate order-
1) Very many pedestrians helped me pick myself and my bike up off the road.
2) Several people called ambulances (in fact I think there were three ambulances and two police cars).
3) Supposedly my first reaction (undoubtedly one of shock) was to immediately start sending a message on my phone...
4) I started losing it as soon as I got into the ambulance. I couldn't remember my name, my address or my phone number. I had no idea who the current prime minister was and I thought I was late for school.
5) The ambulance took me to hospital at 9am.
6) Somehow the paramedics managed to call my sister and when I came to at the hospital, my sister and mother were by my side.
7) A CT scan, diagnosed concussion and four stitches later, I was slowly recovering. They kept me for a couple of hours to observe me and sent me on my way home at about 3pm.
(Fans of Geek on a Bicycle will be astounded that my shoulder didn't dislocate. I can reveal that it is a little sore but is very much where it should be!)

There is a picture of a broken me and my broken bicycle here.

As part of standard recovery, I'm housebound for a while - and won't be returning to work until Monday. I'm not supposed to drive for a couple of weeks and no sport for at least that long too. Whilst I can't say that I would have escaped without an injury if I had been wearing a helmet, it would certainly have lessened the impact of the concussion... I'm pretty certain the stitches on my face and general road rash all over my shoulders, arms and legs would still have been there. Lesson learnt though - I will be wearing my helmet forevermore, even if it is a slight inconvenience.